


Wanderball Week 2016 - Holy Hillstep, Bananaman!

by 3amepiphany



Series: Wanderball Week 2016 [2]
Category: Wander Over Yonder
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 16:45:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8540713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: Nothing rhymes with sporange.





	

**Author's Note:**

> http://omegalovaniac.tumblr.com/post/153107283819/okok-neeeeeed-to-get-it-here-and-leave-you-some
> 
> Some amazing fun happens when you google "Bluegrass Dubstep".

“He’s just a bag of hot air, though,” said Screwball, carefully wiggling a reed frame of his concertina back into its place. “There’s a lot to be said about how empty almost all of his threats are. I’m of the opinion that we ought to expose him. Not just to make a point, but because it sure would be a good laugh. I had this idea. What if I told him I made this incredible track suit out of some of the galaxy’s finest metamaterial, and it would render him absolutely immune to soundwaves that he finds offensive?”

Wander looked up from his pile of ruined banjo strings, a little disheartened that he was running low on the custom gauge but glad that the pot didn’t sustain the damage that it had the last time they’d gone up against Emperor Awesome and his Wub-Machine Guns. They sat on the deck of the ship, tools in hand now, having fallen back after their last plan had failed. To their credit, they hadn’t known that the foam party in the very first festival tent had glow-in-the-dark paint _in_ the foam itself, and that it would give them away on the darkened stage a little later. He shook his head. “There’s nothin’ nice about laughin’ at someone in their skivvies, especially when you put them there.”

“I didn’t say anything about disrobing the guy.”

“I’m well aware that the audio-sensitive metamaterials vibrate at such frequencies as to make them nearly transparent.” Wander’s long drawl was a bit curt.

“But he’d still be wearing them.” Carefully, Screwball cleaned up the leavings of his last tape job on the inside of the pan and looked to line the frame back up to put it back in. “I don’t know, Boy Wander. I just feel like it’s really important to the people of Blorenge-Prime to laugh. They haven’t had joy in a good while. I know they’re hardy people, the Trifoliata, and this is probably the longest siege Awesome’s seen in months, but you can’t be afraid and laugh at the same time.”

“I know that.”

“I know you know that.”

“We can come up with something better. We can do better.”

“Well that’s no fun. He doesn’t even speak Mandarin,” Screwball said with a sigh.

But there wasn’t anything better. They had to just get right back up and fight amplifier with amplifier.

The small Byzantooth amps were something that Screwball had been tinkering with since he’d seen how annoyingly loud they were in videos he’d found about homemade setups, and while it had taken some convincing of the Boy Wander to allow him to make them, he knew this was the best time to put them to the test, finally, to show that they were a good idea. Using some contact mics, he quickly outfitted them both to the amp, and after sending the ship itself into a reverb that threatened to shake all of the puffy stars right off of it and jostle their Warp Orbble solution into action, they felt that they were ready to try again.

They skipped trying to sneak in through the tents and just Warp Orbbled straight down underneath the sound booth for the main stage to sneak the Byzantooth amp and adapters into the equipment before they were noticed at all. Then it was a fast transition to sit up in the lighting to wait.

When the emcee for the evening welcomed the denizens held hostage and introduced Emperor Awesome to the stage “yet again, for you tough-skinned navel-gazers,” that was when they sprung into action. And sprung they did. And misjudged the landing. Screwball tumbled forward a bit, rolling haphazardly, while Wander rolled backwards, coming to his feet quickly. As Screwball resituated himself he said, “Talk about a slip!”

Awesome groaned and yelled out to his Fist Fighters laconically to fire up the metronome and get the synths on.

Screwball pulled the bellows open and then compressed. Everything came to an absolute stand-still as the note that came from the concertina over their hijacked monitors was a low, sad, “moo.” He looked back at his partner, who was giving him a look that was something between worried and amused, fingers paused. “Pad down!” he yelled.

The shark took the opportunity to let the bass drop.

Screwball slid back behind Wander, who tossed him his little brass kazoo in a fluid, split-second movement, and went back into his reverie with a fervent key change. “Thanks, special friend!” he yelled, carefully removing one of the contact mics from the concertina and using its own cord to wrap it down to the end of the kazoo.

“Just wanna see you have some fun,” Wander replied.

The cacophony this caused also created a strange effect across the crowd. Screwball looked over to see a lone glow-stick flying up in a beautiful, spinning arc towards the stage. It narrowly missed the wavering beam from Wander’s banjo and bounced further back, making contact with the projection screen. Wander had seen it, too, and steeled himself for the coming onslaught.

Awesome had just turned around to retrieve these huge, obnoxiously blinking hula-hoops from one of his Fist Fighters just off stage, and before he could even get them whirling to deflect the hammer-ons spitting off of the nomad’s fretboard, he had to use them against a few more glow-sticks headed their way. Before he knew it, he was using one hand’s twirling on the trouble in front of him and another on the barrage from the crowd, jumping and kicking and ducking to the best of his own abilities to try and keep himself from being pelted. It was throwing his rhythm off so badly that the monitors were also being affected, causing the stage to shake as the equilibrium couldn’t be balanced, and that was when things really got hazy.

Not only were they laughing and jeering at the shark’s ungainly antics, the crowd started to fight back in the only way they could at that moment - they started dancing about. All of the contact started to unleash a cloud of citrus oils. It was cloying and annoying, and Wander let the sustain on his banjo do some of the work alongside the flying festival toys for just a moment so that he could wrap his towel-cape around his face cowl-style and look for a way out of there before things started to collapse.

Screwball coughed and took his beaglepuss off for a second to rub at his peel, and said, “I can’t vitamin C. I can’t concentrate! Meet me in the pulp-pit?”

“Get it all out,” Wander said, rolling his eyes.

“I’ll ream a path through the crowd for sure,” was Screwball’s retort. They jumped down between the stage and the barricade, and before the security detail could grab them, they hopped up and over the fencing, and let the crazed and empowered crowd push them through to the back and to a safe little nook behind a tent to get their Warp Orbble juice prepared.

“Gosh, that crowd sure blossomed into a pithy party really quick, didn’t it?” Screwball tightened the strap on his concertina and turned to hand Wander back the kazoo with some thanks, but was kind of surprised to see that the Boy Wander’s face was still long. “What’s the matter?”

“They’re laughin’ at him. We made them laugh at him.”

“They’re having a pretty good time, I’d say. Crushing the stage, it looks like. We’d better jam out of here, buddy.”

“Marmelade,” Wander said sullenly.

He chuckled, eyes swirling. “Good try. Let’s go.”


End file.
